The Discovery Flight will be launched by an aerospace company called “UP Aerospace” from a location in New Mexico called “Spaceport America,” and will land by parachute in another location in New Mexico called “White Sands Missile Range.” Following is some background information about all three.
UP Aerospace
UP Aerospace is a space launch and test flight services provider that was incorporated in 2005 to offer world class access to space. The company specializes in advanced engineering launch technology development and state-of-the-art lean ground operations.
Using privately funded sources, UP Aerospace Inc. created a brand new low cost sounding rocket class vehicle named SpaceLoft XL. Qualification test flights of the SpaceLoft XL rocket have been successfully launched. On April 28, 2007 SpaceLoft XL made its historic first space flight from New Mexico’s Spaceport America Launch Pad One. Celestis’ Legacy Flight was a part of that mission.
2007 launch of the Celestis Legacy Flight from Spaceport America aboard an UP Aerospace SpaceLoft XL rocket
UP Aerospace’s US and international customer base spans a full range of commercial and educational experiments flown aboard the SpaceLoft XL rocket. The company’s test flight services include advanced technology demonstrator operations for small and major aerospace companies.
UP Aerospace corporate, engineering and manufacturing offices are headquartered in Denver, Colorado, with business offices located in Connecticut.
Spaceport America
The unveiling of the Spaceport America brand shines light on a visionary project many years in the making. New Mexico’s weather and wide-open spaces have been ideal for the aerospace industry since Robert Goddard, the Father of Modern Rocketry, began conducting research in Roswell in the 1930s. He was followed by Wernher von Braun in the 1940s, and NASA in the 1960s.
Liftoff of NASA's Little Joe II launch vehicle from White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, August 28, 1963.
By the early 1990s, a group of like-minded individuals, called the Southwest Space Task Force, felt the impetus to take New Mexico’s space industry to the next level: commercial space and reusable launch vehicles. Based on years of study, they zeroed in on 27 square-miles of state-owned land, 45 miles north of Las Cruces as a location for an inland spaceport. When Economic Development Cabinet Secretary Rick Homans took office in 2003, they went to him and pleaded their case.
Homans then picked up the torch, presenting the idea of a New Mexico spaceport to Governor Richardson, negotiating with the X Prize Foundation to locate the X Prize Cup in New Mexico, spearheading legislation to finance the spaceport, and most recently, recruiting four aerospace mavericks — including Virgin Galactic — to New Mexico.
Groundbreaking for Spaceport America is planned for early summer 2009, and the New Mexico Spaceport Authority currently projects a terminal and hangar facility to be completed by late 2010.
White Sands Missile Range
White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) is the largest military installation in the United States. Founded in 1945 as the “White Sands Proving Ground,” the first atomic bomb was detonated there in July 1945. WSMR’s “Launch complex 33” – which is a National Historical Landmark – was used for testing of such famous missiles as the V-2, Nike Ajax, Viking, and Redstone vehicles. Missile testing continues to this day at WSMR.
WSMR played an important role in the early history of the space program. From 1963 to 1966 tests were conducted at WSMR of the Apollo Launch Escape System (LES). Remember the Apollo-era launches of the Saturn V’s from Cape Canaveral? Or, if you’re too young to remember — or if you weren’t even born until after the Apollo era ended — have you at least seen photos or video of those launches? Remember the little rocket that sat atop the capsule that carried the astronauts? That little rocket was the main component of the LES: In the event of a launch emergency, the rocket could be fired to separate the capsule carrying the astronauts from the Saturn V. The LES was tested in the early ‘60s on a launch vehicle called the “Little Joe II.”
This Apollo 11 photo shows the Apollo Launch Escape System -- the little rocket on top of the capsule.
On March 30, 1982 the space shuttle Columbia (STS-3) landed at WSMR’s “Northrop Strip” (later renamed “White Sands Space Harbor”). And if you’re a space geek like me you’ll remember the Delta Clipper Experimental Advanced (DC-XA) spacecraft from the 1990s, which was a vertical take off and landing vehicle prototype that, it was hoped, would one day lead to the development of a Single Stage To Orbit (SSTO) spacecraft: Such a spacecraft could significantly reduce launch costs. The DC-XA flight tests were conducted at WSMR in 1996.
DC-XLA at WSMR, 1996
Note: Much of the material for this blog entry comes directly from the Web sites of UP Aerospace, Spaceport America, and the White Sands Missile Range Museum. Tomorrow I’ll discuss UP Aerospace’s SpaceLoft XL rocket that will lift the Discovery Flight into space.
